The Exec: 'Physicians Are Partners, not Employees'

Tucson Medical Center's new CFO says he can't be making financial decisions in a vacuum.

Tucson Medical Center has tapped Bradley Hipp as the system's new CFO and Vice President.

Prior to joining TMC, Hipp served as chief financial officer for Banner University Medicine Tucson. He has also held finance leadership positions with Loyola Medicine and WellPoint.

Right off the bat, Hipp says he was excited to jump into his new position and knew he was stepping into a quality-driven organization.

"TMC is a leader in these areas, providing excellent quality, high patient experience," he says.

"You've got a dedicated community that is hugely supportive of Tucson Medical Center and what we mean to the community then drives the financials."

There's much that goes into ensuring quality from a health system, and Hipp says one thing he found and loved at TMC was that the organization has a good grip on how to pivot and adapt when needed.

"Just when you think you kind of figure something out, whether it's through legislation or a pandemic or anything else, it throws you a curveball and you're constantly trying to figure out what kind of curveballs are coming next," he says. "Having that basic block and tackling technique, I believe that TMC has that basic act of tackling down really well."

Quality comes first, and finances will follow, Hipp explains.

One piece of Hipp's financial strategy at TMC is looking at operations through a service line perspective. To do this, there must be service line alignment and a strategic arrangement. CFOs should examine what a community really needs and then think about those needs through a service line lens.

A second piece is staying on top of payer tactics. Hipp says health systems don't always have the luxury of margins to fall back on, so CFOs must work with payers to not only get them more engaged on denials, but also with peer reviews to be able to stick to their prior authorizations.
"It's a two-edged sword," he says. "You're losing on the revenue side and then your cost to collect goes way up because you have to invest resources in the revenue cycle side to track that down and to monitor that."

Partners, Not Employees

One consistent theme amongst finance leaders' goals and strategies this year has been collaboration; it's vital for health systems, particularly in finance. CFOs must make sure they are not making decisions in a vacuum and include other valuable perspectives from clinical teams that will affect patient care.

"I see finance's role as more of a consultative type approach, where we can present data to the chair or the physician leadership," Hipp says.

Hipp says healthcare finance must move on from the dictatorial type of reporting and strategizing that may have dominated in the past, and into an era of close-knit collaboration that brings invaluable insight to the discussion.

Physicians and nurses have the expertise and the scientific mindset to think through operational challenges. Hipp recalled a memory from his time working at Loyola that put physicians' work and dedication in perspective.

"Probably 10 years ago, when I was at Loyola, I was kind of stuck in traffic getting to an 8 a.m. meeting," he says. "It was a surgical clinical program meeting. It was one of those mornings where just everything was just kind of going wrong, and you're irritated when you walk in. Then we get to the meeting. We're in this room. The lead person on the physician side wasn't there. We're like, ‘Oh, god, what's going on?' He walks in 15 minutes later. He still has his scrubs on and he has blood on his scrubs. He said, ‘We had a tough night last night. We just had a double lung transplant.'"

Moments like this, Hipp says, put the value of physicians' work into perspective. To make the most informed clinical financial decisions, clinicians need to be at the table.

"And you think that you're so important with what you're trying to do?" he says. "But if you don't have that collaboration with those physicians then you're not going to be successful."